Getting Around To New Pesticide Rules

September 01, 1992

Working with pesticides and waiting on Washington for necessary regulatory action have a lot in common. Both can be hazardous to your health. It took eight years of bureaucratic sparring before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finally issued new rules meant to better protect workers exposed to pesticides.

It wasn`t all the EPA`s fault; it was battered between the Department of Agriculture, which felt the rules were too tough and potentially expensive for the agricultural industry, and advocates for farm workers, who felt they weren`t tough enough.

The results still won`t please either side, and yet it`s hard to understand what all the fuss was about. The final rules are essentially a common-sense approach to dealing with one of the biggest risks of agricultural work. And for the first time, nursery, greenhouse and forest workers will be covered as well.

Employers, for example, will be required to train workers in how to handle pesticides safely and use such protective equipment as gloves and goggles.

They will have to post safety notices in English and Spanish describing pesticide risks and keep workers out of freshly sprayed fields for 12 hours to three days, depending on the toxicity of the pesticide used. They will have to provide places for workers to wash, with ample soap and water, after exposure to pesticides.

Common sense or not, these procedures often are not followed now. Failure to do so in the future will be punishable with fines, though the EPA must depend on state agricultural agencies to enforce them.

It is estimated that some 4 million people will be affected by the rules. How many will be protected from harm isn`t clear.

Because record-keeping has been so poor, the estimates of illnesses from pesticide poisonings vary wildly from 20,000 to 300,000 per year, with as many as 1,000 fatalities.

Even if these figures are exaggerated, this clearly is a substantial health issue. It is appalling that government stalled so long before dealing with it; it must be far more responsible in the enforcement.